Monday, July 18, 2005

Barra and Destiny

my trip to barra helped me envision a destiny community living off the land. they offer workshops all summer long feeding the attendees with food they grow from a 1/4 acre garden. i could imagine a couple three-season stewards managing a garden at destiny, living off the land for the summer, helping to provide food for gatherings and maintaining the place. i'm convinced we need stewards now, and our designs should reflect this.

essentially, jim and rowan are permaculturists, and throughout the weekend they showed us examples of their implementation of permaculture which helped me think about ways destiny could implement them. their solar hot water heating system worked really well, completely passively, gravity fed. i'm going to talk to the state today to see if we can't implement some of these ideas. our public campground designation has been a challenge all the way through the design process, requiring us to implement conventional solutions. perhaps, since we began this process, there may be greater allowances for alternative systems.